I just want to alert you about a situation that just happened to me that I am 99% sure was a scam.

A couple of days ago, I received a "like" on my Facebook page from a woman purportedly from Towson, MD, that I never heard of before. She then sent a message via Facebook that she wanted to buy some of my paintings. She included an email address. I emailed her back with specific information on the pieces she mentioned. What made me suspicious was that she wasn't really interested in the specifics, she just kept inquiring about different pieces and how she could pay for them.

I searched for her on Facebook and while she did have a page, there were no posts by her whatsoever and her info was sparse.

I looked up scams involving artists online and it seems the scammers target online artists like you and I. The scam is they arrange to buy artwork for which they pay by (phony) check; however, they OVERPAY to cover shipping and ask you to reimburse them. By the time their phony check bounces, they've cashed your good one and are long gone.

I plugged this woman's name and email into some scam finder sites and she did not come up, so I don't want to advertise her name and email address, but since I stopped replying to her messages, she has stopped sending them, which seems a tad suspicious.

I just wanted to alert you to be on the lookout for situations like this. If you, too, have run into such scams, please reply in the comments section with your experience or with advice to help out other artists or musicians.